Yahoo has begun outlining a new strategy to become the “world’s premiere digital media company.” And to explain it, the company is invoking the periodic table of elements.
During a presentation at Flickr headquarters in San Francisco, Yahoo VP Steve Douty said that Yahoo has refocused its mission in the wake of major leadership changes — in other words, the firing of former CEO Carol Bartz. To that end, it is doubling down on its new mission: “To build deeply personal digital experiences,” according to Douty. That’s a vague statement to say the least, but at least it gives the troubled company some some sort of direction.
Yahoo’s strategy is composed of five “elements” — an idea the company was putting together towards the end of the Bartz era. Displayed in the form of the periodic table, the “elements” are as follows:
- En: To engage and delight users.
- Be: To be where the customer goes.
- Si: To deliver personal meaning through science and data.
- So: To own real social relationships on the web.
- Ec: To build an ecosystem.
Buzzwords and mission statements aside, Yahoo still has one solid asset: its traffic. It’s also way ahead of the game in mobile. Douty says that the company now has 137 million unique visitors every month on mobile devices, and is the number-three most recognized mobile brand with 50% reach in the U.S. Yahoo also has “42,000 unique homepage experiences at Yahoo.com every five minutes,” he said.
More About: flickr, Yahoo For more Business coverage: 


Cricket and I went to Queens to the New York Hall of SCIENCE! (emphasis mine, not theirs) to go to Maker Faire. Maker Faire, from what I understand, is kind of a positive backlash to how industrialized our world has become. People make stuff. It’s that simple. Now, unfortunately for me, people predominantly make things that do something (math, science, computers. engineering, etc.), and I only make things that already exist look better. I had no idea what was going on most of the time. For example, I saw signs like this:

What the huh? And this one:

But what I read was this:

I was truly out of my milieu. But I had a jolly good time anyway. First of all, as you come in there is a giant dinosaur made from car and truck parts with a couch in it that children were sitting on. And fire was coming out of its nose. I want one for my living room.

Then there are a variety of white tents set up all over the grounds. The first one I hit was the Craftacular sponsored by Bust Magazine (motto: “getting it off our chests”). I was familiar with everything going on there. In fact, I bought myself some steampunk items from a lovely woman who came all the way from Columbus, Ohio. I got a necklace made for a watch exterior with a morpho butterfly wing in it, and I also got a pendant made from the watch’s interior components.
 Then Cricket and I headed over to the Maker Pavilion:

Where the big thing this year is 3D printers. What is a 3D printer, you ask? Good question. You make an object in a 3D program, then you send the file to the nice printing machine. On top of the printer is a spool of plastic, and what happens is the plastic string is drawn down to a heated little element which lays it out in rows over and over itself, not unlike how one makes a coiled clay pot. It can make just about any shape. It totally blew my mind. Here’s what the big industrial machine looks like (note the spool of plastic):

They were also selling an Ikea version that came flat-packed that you assembled yourself, which was adorable:

And here are some the crazy-awesome things the 3D printer could make:

Apparently it can also do it in metal and glass, but I couldn’t figure out how.

Anyway, instead of buying one of these machines, you can also just send some of the companies your designs and they will print it for you (which is what I would do if I was making something). Here’s one company’s information:

Another big tent that was there was the Arduino Pavilion.

When I asked Cricket what an Arduino was, he sighed heavily and told me it was a small computer. I waited outside this pavilion while Cricket pottered around inside looking at…Arduinos.
There were a variety of littler tents scattered all around the grounds showing other people’s cool ideas. For example, there was the lock picker tent.

Another tent had a rather genius idea in it based on Archimedes’ mirror death ray.

You, a doctor in a rural area without an effective way to keep your tools disease-free, receive this box with angled bits of wood in it and a pile of 3″ x 3″ mirrors. You place the mirrors on the angled bits of wood and when the sun hits it, it focuses the sun’s rays on one very hot spot. You put your surgical knives or clampers or whatever in that beam, and it’s so hot it burns away all the evil bacteria and/or viruses. It never goes bad or loses its potency and is relatively easy to transport and/or repair. I think it’s brilliant.
Outside the tents was a solar carousel.

And a fish bike which I believe I saw at the Mermaid Parade.

And this guy eating chinese food.

By then, Cricket and I were peckish, so we stood in line for paella, which was cooked in giant paella pans. And the paella was mad good too.

I felt bad for the fresh fruit vendor next door because he had a bit of a honeybee situation. The honeybees were lovin’ it, though.

But my favorite thing was definitely the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir. I heard about it a few years ago, but I never thought I would see it in person. And lemme tell you, it is magical. I’m not even being obnoxious. It’s magical. Cricket and I stood in front of this thing for at least three songs.

Here’s a video someone took of the Sashimi Tabernacle Choir performing Bohemian Rhapsody. I don’t know what’s up the the filmer’s camera, but the clicking noise is NOWHERE that loud in real life. You can totally hear the music all the time.
http://bit.ly/pSDJZI;
And this video’s pretty great too. Note the conducting lobster near the top.
http://bit.ly/pOZrgx;
And this one. Because I love this car.
http://bit.ly/rh7O2E;
Over the past few years I have started to see an unnerving trend. Being an entrepreneur or working at a startup is now the “cool thing to do.” Before startups, working at a Hedge Fund was the “it” job. And by no means am I an expert in startups (yet) but my experience over the last few years has led me to observe and learn quite a bit.
During recent meetings, interviews and overall banter at bars with some of the well knowns in the startup community, this trend or obsession with startups has begun to show its face. I hope that this observation is only a small one and one that will not turn into (dare I say it) a bubble, or the bursting of a bubble for that matter. So what is it like to work at an early stage startup? Well, from the two years of experience that I have bootstrapping with BostInno, it is the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. Being an entrepreneur does not mean “working your own hours” or “being your own boss” as my esteemed professors at Babson College once taught me. It is a disease. You will give up everything for almost nothing at first. You will work from sunrise to sunset pissing off friends and family. And girlfriends/boyfriends, well they better be patient. So why do it? Because you are wired to make a difference. Sitting in a cubicle at a couple hundred or couple thousand person company just doesn’t do it for you. You need to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Determination, risk taking and passion are what you live by. You’d rather beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. When your friends are all leaving the office at 5pm sharp you are just starting to get your third wind with an eye on at least 10 pm. And yet you’d never switch places, not even for a second. You are making decisions 10 times above your pay grade, you are attempting to start something from scratch and more importantly you have a team next to you that would take a bullet for you. However, all of the sudden thanks to the movie The Social Network and the constant spotlight on internet entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Biz, Ev and Jack Dorsey, entrepreneurs are turning into the “cool kids on the block.” Last week, Business Insider wrote a piece on how the Twitter founders were partying all night in Vegas – ugh, they are not the Kardashian sisters. And consequently we are seeing an explosive amount of startups and entrepreneurs hitting coworking spaces and coffee shops all over the country. “So what do you do?” “I’m an entrepreneur bro, ya know working at a startup.” “It’s a wild ride right? Let’s get some beers and talk about it.” Now an influx of startups is certainly a good thing. It makes our job a lot easier but also a hell of a lot more frustrating. Every day we meet, talk, and listen to incredible founding stories from entrepreneurs. Stories that inspire me to push myself and that make me proud to then tell their story. But then all of the sudden this happens - a few meetings with people who only want that title or association with a startup or being an entrepreneur. Their stories are half-assed and mostly end with…”I can’t wait until my first exit, raising money is going to be easy.” They only want to hang in the social scene and rub elbows with the folks that are actually building companies. Newsflash: it is not about the exit, it is about the journey. (But, don’t get me wrong, I’d love a huge exit under my belt.) That roller coaster of a lifetime full of ups and downs. Ups and downs so great you have to slap yourself and your team at the end of the day. Experiencing the incredible feelings of signing up real clients, generating actually revenues and building your team from scratch. Experiences that no amount of money can buy. And yet some people are trying so hard for all of the wrong reasons.
On Thursday over 1,800 people (current RSVP’s) will descend on the Harpoon Brewery for a night of networking, storytelling, dancing, fun games with Social Boston Sports, and of course, drinking some of the finest beer in town. This event is the official kick off to Harpoon’s widely celebrated Harpoonfest every fall which will take place Friday through Saturday this weekend. And for the first time ever Harpoon has asked BostInno to host the kick off the Thursday night before the big show.
Thanks to some phenomenal partners – FamaPR, Where, Skyhook, Sybase, Goodwin Procter, DartBoston and Social Boston Sports – we have lined up an incredible event complete with bag toss games, one free beer upon arrival, live music from one of Boston’s rising stars and last but not least some incredible DJ’ing from the folks over at The Echo Nest. The first 100 people through the gates will also get a free t-shirt and make sure you tweet your pics during the event with the hashtag #BostInnoFest to see them in a gallery post-event on BostInnovation.com. As this is an extension of Harpoon’s Octoberfest we will be having some amazing live, local music. Performing throughout the night on the mainstage will be Will Dailey and the Rivals. Will is a 2x winner of the Boston Music Awards has been featured in over 50 TV shows and movies, and performed with Neil Young, Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp. Will and his band have just launched a new album last week and will be showcasing it for the first time in front of a large audience at Harpoon. This event is the kickoff of BostInno’s accelerated growth into mainstream content, specifically with the launch of a Sports, Edu, and Around the Hub sections. This event is RAIN or SHINE and is 21+ with proper ID required at the door. See you Thursday night! SIGN UP BELOW!
Imagine the scene: the Patriots have a 21-17 lead with just over three minutes left on the clock in a late-November game at the Meadowlands. The Jets have a third-and-six at their own 38-yard line as Mark Sanchez goes to the shotgun with a single back and trips right, with the Pats cheating left and prepared to blitz Sanchez’ blind side before he can get the ball out.
As any fan does, you’re not only watching the game on TV, you’re also following it online, where you have your fantasy matchups on one monitor and Twitter open on the other, just in case there’s any insight that you might not be getting from the TV guys. Sanchez barks out signals, each of which can be heard clearly over the silence of the nearly 100,000 fans. The Patriots shift at the line, and Jerod Mayo calls out of the blitz when he senses a screen. You take a swig of your beer, hoping that whatever’s about to happen doesn’t cause you to spit it out. As the ball is snapped, your timeline refreshes and you see something you weren’t prepared for: a tweet from Chad Ochocinco, who’s very much active and in uniform, and very much on the sideline at this game. Sanchez barely makes it to his fifth step before a charging Patrick Chung sends him to the ground, forcing a fumble which Mayo recovers and returns for a touchdown. The Patriots tack on one more touchdown as Devin McCourty is the beneficiary of a pick-six tossed up by Sanchez, and win the game, 35-17. But the highlight, not surprisingly, involved Ochocinco. “Everybody wants special and inside treatment, so content from the dugout or the sidelines or in the locker room is valuable,” says Lou Imbriano, founder of TrinityONE and former VP of Marketing for the Patriots, and owner of four Super Bowl rings himself. “Teams should find a way to monetize that content, to get that content out to consumers to make them feel connected.” It may be a bit unrealistic to expect Ocho to be the one to break the barrier, and according to Imbriano, a baseball player is more likely to tweet from the dugout than any football player ever would be from the sideline. “Let’s say a Sox player is in the dugout and there’s a new cap coming out, and they say they want to turn it into a rally-cap and if you want to buy it, you can click here,” Imbriano continued. Of course, there are regulations in place that keep players from tweeting from a certain time before the games start until after postgame press conferences end. But those regulations can only last so long, Imbriano notes. “The players need to do something for the players, and the League needs to do something for the League, and they need to come up with a strategy that takes everybody’s goals into account and create a plan that achieves all those goals,” he continued, reminding that it doesn’t need to be a PR nightmare, because anything players say in a press conference will spread just as quickly as what they say in a tweet will. Tweeting from the sidelines or from the dugout isn’t something that’s going to reveal strategy, it’s not something that players will use to talk trash – we learned from Kevin Garnett and Charlie Villanueva that that stays on the playing field. But it is something that will further engage fans and consumers of the product, which is what teams and leagues should be after. Sure, social media on the sidelines could be a distraction. Sure, it could be a legal issue for leagues. But assuming no legal ramifications, assuming that players are entrusted to send out a few tweets here and there, it’s hard to see a way in which supplementing traditional coverage with an in-game approach wouldn’t take off. “There’s enough engagement that everyone can get a piece,” Imbriano concluded, reminding me that they aren’t called teams for no reason at all. “They need to find out how they’re more powerful together than alone.”
Looking to crank out some work, build a website or start a company? A solid workspace is on the top of your list. Your couch may be comfy, but it’s an easy way to get sucked into a Jersey Shore marathon. While coffee shops generally promote a working environment, sometimes the constant smell of caffeine and sound of cash registers just doesn’t cut it. When you’re really looking to get down to business, check out these 12 coworking spaces to help you get started. For more coworking spaces around the city you can check out Greenhorn Connect‘s comprehensive list.
Bocoup Loft 355 Congress St., Boston Brickyard Collaboration Space (BCS) 86 Sherman St., Cambridge 617-576-1280 Cambridge Co-Working Center (C3) One Broadway, 14th Floor, Cambridge 617-401-3300 Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) One Broadway, 14th Floor, Cambridge 617-758-4100 Design Annex 66-70 Union Square, Somerville 617-955-0080 Dogpatch Labs 1 Cambridge Center, 6th Floor, Cambridge Geek Offices 1035 Cambridge St., Suite 1, Cambridge 617-539-6999 Space with a Soul 281 Summer St., Boston 617-744-9336 Tech Superpowers’ Digital Lounge 252 Newbury St., Boston 617-267-9716 The Venture Café One Broadway, 4th floor, Cambridge 617-758-4128 Venture Development Center at UMass Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd., Wheatley Hall, Floor 3, Boston 617-287-6070 Workbar 711 Atlantic Ave, Lower Level, Boston 617-861-4940 In addition to these spaces, sites like Open Office Space allow you find office space, by posting your needs directly to their database. Have space to share? They’ve got an option for that, too. Now you have excuse not to get to work!
Good morning and welcome to the BostInno morning beat. As always, there has been a lot of action in the tech scene already today and we want to make sure we keep you in the know. These are the hot stories that we are tracking this morning so you don’t have to. Grab a cup of coffee and check out what’s hot. I have also included a round up of posts, just in case you missed one.
YC NYC: Paul Graham Shares The Antidote To Startup Poison The antidote is a high concentration of smart, driven people who are interested in entrepreneurship and technology, and the likelihood of bumping into someone who can help you increases drastically. Facebook to Launch iPad App at Apple’s iPhone 5 Event [EXCLUSIVE] Not that I am doubting Mashable, ok I am doubting Mashable a little here. So many thoughts are running through my head… Apple snubbed Facebook this year with the iOS 5 deep Twitter integration. The two companies do have a strained relationship, but maybe they are looking to mend that? Although, having Facebook launch its LONG awaited iPad app during the HUGE iPhone 5 event, just sounds crazy. Apple likes the spotlight, we know that. But, Steve Jobs IS gone, maybe Apple is turning over a new lead and cozy-ing up with the big players to beat Google. Time will tell. On Wednesday, Amazon Will Unveil The “Kindle Fire” On Wednesday morning in New York City, Amazon will unveil the Kindle Fire. Yes, this is the name Amazon has settled on, to help differentiate the product from the e-ink Kindles, which will still be very much alive and for sale. And while Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will show off the Fire on stage, it won’t be ready to ship until the second week of November. Quora Gets Threaded Comments, Comment Voting, Editing And Images I’m sorry are people still using Quora? Google Plus Traffic Went Up 1269% Last Week I’m sorry are people still using Google Plus? Is New York’s Tech Boom Sustainable? “The truth is that I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Hubs tend to stay hubs.” With its Standout tag, Google News is giving publishers a new incentive to credit the competition Google is giving a little more control to publishers when it comes to ranking the most valuable news content. Yesterday’s RoundupBostInno Sports Beat: The Trouble in Foxboro Edition What it Costs to Hire & Train a New Employee [Infographic] DataXu Launches DX Social to Drive Deeper Engagement Across Digital Media Channels Prom Trauma: Wasted Youth – Upcoming Tech Prom Video World Premiere BostInno Approved: What to do this week 9/26/11 Zeo Launches Mobile Sleep Manager, Scores Distribution Deal with Best Buy Student Steals of the Week: Ghosts, Witch Trials, Plasma Watches & More What We Learned: Patriots vs. Bills Wellesley, Babson & Olin College Collaborate on a Sustainability Program 10 Hot New Restaurants Opening Their Doors This Fall BusinessWeek Top 25 Under 25: 3 Boston Area Founders Honored as America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs Harvard Overheard: Why the Cambridge University is the Most Buzzed About University Online How Secure is Your Twitter Password? When Good Twitter Accounts Go Bad [Infographic] What & Where Exactly is Boston’s West End? Get Down & Break A Sweat: 5 Fun Ways to Beat the Freshman 15

At the present time, flying unmanned drone aircraft requires a skilled operator and a lot of equipment. Engineers at the Boeing Company and researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology want to change all of that and make it possible for regular people to control aircraft from a handheld device like an iPhone.
In the Boeing video shown below, an operator in Seattle is tapping and swiping on the screen of an iPhone and flying a tethered drone on a baseball field at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The idea of the experiment is not to have iPhone owners wage war, but to "allow drones to be used more effectively for tasks that are dirty or dangerous, as well as for missions that may be too long and tedious to have a human be continuously at the controls."
The experimental app features two modes of operation. The first lets the operator set a path for the drone to follow by tapping waypoints on a map displayed on the iPhone screen, while the second mode uses a camera on the drone and "nudge controls" to send the aircraft in the desired direction.
The project is a collaboration between the aerospace giant and MIT, and a fascinating look at how iPhone apps are being developed for use by the military.
iPhone app controls drone aircraft 3,000 miles away originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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